COVID-19 PCR Test Performance for Samples Stored at Ambient Temperature

  1. Nihat Bugra Agaoglu
  2. Jale Yıldız
  3. Ozlem Akgun Dogan
  4. Gizem Alkurt
  5. Betsi Kose
  6. Yasemin Kendir Demirkol
  7. Arzu Irvem
  8. Levent Doğanay
  9. Gizem Dinler Doganay

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Abstract

Background

The new type of Coronavirus infection had become a pandemic in a very short period since it was first seen in Wuhan. The outbreak had a negative impact on all health care systems throughout the world and overwhelmed the diagnostic laboratories as well. During the pandemic, handling patient specimens in accordance with the universal guidelines was troublesome as WHO, CDC and ECDC required cold chain compliance during transporting and storing the swap samples.

Materials and methods

In this study, we tested diagnostic performance of RT-PCR on 30 swab samples stored at ambient temperature and compared them with the samples stored at +4°C.

Results

Our results revealed that all the samples stored at ambient temperature remain PCR positive for at least five days. We did not see any false negativity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we report that transferring and storing of nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal samples at ambient temperature could be possible in the resource-limited conditions like pandemic.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.15.153882: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Sample Collection, Transportation, and Storage: This study was approved by the Umraniye Teaching and Research Hospital ethical committee Nasopharyngeal/oropharyngeal swabs were collected by trained personnel and transferred to GLAB-Corona 7 in Viral Transport Media (VTM, Innomed VTM001).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The limitation of our study is the considered range of temperatures, between 20°C and 24°C. Temperatures higher than 24°C may be common in some tropical research and/or storage settings so the time period that samples remain positive may be variable. Also, the limited number of samples can be counted as another limitation of our study.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • No conflict of interest statement was detected. If there are no conflicts, we encourage authors to explicit state so.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.15.153882 on bioRxiv